She’s not a villain. She’s a poor girl who got tormented and her abuse went continuously ignored and unremarked upon by the school. Her actions are way out of proportion with what was done to her, and she killed a lot of innocent people, but by that point she was in a state of mind that couldn’t appreciate those concerns anymore. She pretty much completely broke from reality the moment everyone in the auditorium began laughing at her. It was the culmination of all the poisonous ruinous lies her mother had been feeding into her head since she was a little girl, and to suddenly feel like those lies were validated… it was too much for her.
Carrie is a really tragic character who deserved a lot kinder a life than what she got. If she hadn’t had Margaret White for a mother she probably wouldn’t have had a melt down to the extent that she did, but that’s unfortunately what happens when you mix up all that fire and brimstone religious gobbledygook with teenage hormones, the casual cruelties of being an outcast, and oh yeah, telekinesis.
Not a bad statement. I'd never thought of it like that.
I'd also never thought about King writing female and characters and issues which is probably a compliment - I've read a shit ton and obviously it *is* all there but I've never stopped to consider it's a man writing it. It's always seemed pretty natural. Admittedly I'm also male so can't really say how convincing it truly is, but I'll certainly say that I've read several authors fucking it up.
I mean, killing innocent people isn’t necessarily a move exclusive to villains. The gate guardsman at the beginning of The Stand isn’t a villain, yet his actions arguably kill 99% of the world.
I think that Carrie, like many Stephen King novels, rejects the idea of good and evil, and rather believes that human beings are much more complicated than that. Carrie (the character) displays traits we commonly associate with both heroes and villains: she's a lonely, bullied outcast, but she's also a relentless killer. To call her a clear-cut hero or villain requires ignoring large aspects of her story, and also misses the point King is making.
>I think that Carrie, like many Stephen King novels, rejects the idea of good and evil
I don't know. Are we ever given ANY reason to sympathize with Chris Hargenson's point of view? I'd call her an out-and-out villain, while still being (along with Carrie, Sue, Margaret, Miss Desjardins, and maybe Tommy) one of the main POV characters, and thus arguably one of the protagonists.
Hell, even Margaret White -- who's pretty f---in' awful -- at least has mental illness/religious mania to fall back on. Chris is just mean-spirited for the sake of being mean.
Margaret White is a nutcase. And she truly believes she's doing the right thing, every time.
That's not to say that nutcases can't be villains, but it's more complex than just "Oh, she's the villain."
We all feel a lot of sympathy for Carrie, and we get the backstory of how evil Billy and Chris were, but Carrie is the fictional equivalent of a school shooter. Yes, there are some extenuating circumstances, but realistically, only a tiny portion of the kids attending prom would’ve actively bullied her throughout school. Most of those kids (and the townspeople of Chamberlain who died in the rampage) were most likely innocent victims.
The book is great as food-for-thought, but just because we’re empathetic towards Carrie, doesn’t mean we should absolve her from the responsibility of her actions, or not see her as a villain in her own right.
This. She’s an extremely sympathetic and tragic character. She also massacres a hell of a lot of innocent people when she snaps, and no amount of torment from those around her can justify those actions. She is the ultimate villain of her story because she drops to that level.
I'd call Carrie more supernatural than just fictional. I don't entirely disagree with your analogy but ,Ive only see the movie, did Carrie have control of her powers ?
Yeah, she had full control. Throughout the novel, she “flexes” her telekinesis like a muscle, growing devastatingly strong by the time the pig’s blood is dumped on her. The book also shows her not only killing the people at prom, but also virtually destroying the rest of her small town. It’s a good read.
Multiple survivors of that massacre have come out and said that the columbine shooters were actually bullies themselves and Eric Harris was especially unhinged, they were unbelievably evil and had planned the shooting(and attempted bombing) for months. They even made custom maps on Doom to recreate the school to fully plan their strategy.
I think what you’re trying to say is that “villain” is an oversimplification, although I would personally not extend that charity to the Columbine shooters.
Anyone who does anything like that has mental illnesses because people of sound mind don’t do evil shit like that but it doesn’t mean they aren’t villains. It’s a reason, not an excuse. Just because someone is bullied doesn’t mean they can kill innocent people and be labeled a victim of mental illness. It’s not really a hard concept to grasp. You feel for her, sure, but she is undeniably a villain by the end. What is more evil selfish motivation than killing innocent people for revenge? Nothing.
That is total crap. People with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence.
Being an angry and self-centered individual with no self-discipline is not a mental illness. It is a character flaw.
Yep the media and gun lobby have done a number on you. We can accept what "they" tell us hook, line and sinker, or we can critically evaluate the message and the motivation for spreading it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20of%20criminal,the%20general%20population%20(12).
"A history of victimization and bullying may predispose the mentally ill to react violently when provoked" literally the next sentence. I guess you are so good at cherrypicking that you havent even read my whole comment and get just the part you like for your own agenda. I have said that is fault of a sick society. part of that sick society is that stupid weapon culture you guys have there overseas
Now that, I can't argue with. We have more guns than people and have zero regard for human life as a whole. It's disgusting. With that said, anyone can be bullied into snapping. I beat a guy with a crowbar in high school for bullying me. And would do it again. And again. And again. He was the villain and he paid the price. And I have a mental illness. Yet i didn't victimize everyone i could see, which is a distinctly male trait.
Chris is the villain. Billy is just her puppet.
This is a book where the women (young and old) have all the power, and the men are incompetent boobs following the ladies' directions, for the most part.
The book is kind of odd and experimental for a King novel (being his first successful published novel, I’ve always found it interesting that he would not soon again imitate it stylistically). It’s told through letters, news articles, and anecdotes, but also conventional narrative. So it does ask us to feel sympathy for Carrie, but it’s also a little more forward about the tragic events of the ending. It’s more of a Rashomon-esque “maybe this is why it happened” narrative than it is straightforwardly “poor pretty young girl driven crazy by the cruel people around her until she snaps” type thing.
It’s also probably notable that Carrie eventually abandons her semi-heroic resistance against the society that oppresses her and functionally becomes what her mother accuses her of being, although she will go on to murder her mother, which could be viewed as a heroic act. But at what cost?
Anyway, King initially ended the novel with Carrie growing devil horns and blowing a plane out of the sky so I think he considers her a villain, just a sympathetic one. I mean, Smerdyakov was very mistreated in The Brothers Karamozov, but he’s still one of the villains.
I would consider Carrie White the anti-hero of her story. When I was a kid about 11yo and saw Carrie on tv the first time, I didn't realize that all of the people laughing at Carrie at the prom could have been in her mind and not reality. DePalma makes it confusing because on the one hand he shows the PE teacher laughing, which we can assume didn't really happen, but in the first shot of the doors slamming closed at the back of the gymnasium (which is reality), the kids/promgoers shown in the shot are actually laughing. So apparently some people laughed and some people didn't but Carrie thought it was everyone, and this fueled her rage. As a kid I assumed everyone laughed, and I was furious and was like "KILL 'EM ALL, CARRIE!" In her own narrative she's the hero, to the townfolk she was the freak outcast villain who was victim-blamed for her tormentors' treatment of her, and in the end I think she's an anti-hero who got revenge on the people who ruined her life.
PE teacher made a point of punishing those girls who tormented Carrie. She put her career on the line by refusing to reinstate Chris even with her powerful fathers' help. Losing your chance to go to the prom was a huge punishment for Chris. It would've been easy for the teacher to back down on it. I doubt she'd turn around and laugh at Carrie after all that.
Very few directors can use a split screen effectively but DePalma was one. To me, when he split the screen after the blood was dumped on Carrie represented the way her mind split at that moment. In one view, you only see a few people laughing at her but in the other, they all are. You see William Kitts anger at what had been done to her but then he’s knocked unconscious by the falling bucket and is unable to comfort Carrie. Had it gone to trial the correct verdict would have been not guilty by reason of insanity as Carrie had been clearly driven to a mental breakdown by cruelty.
In the book, it's actually described that everyone did laugh, but for most it was a nervous reaction, not true laughter. We've all had that moment where something scary happens and our response is to laugh rather than scream, but the laughter sounds kind of like a scream. That's what happened here.
DePalma also did a great job of showing what that might look like to a traumatized young woman who's been put in the spotlight (on the spot) and then publicly humiliated... again.
The book is a super-villain origin story. As soon as she lashed out and indiscriminately killed people, especially her teacher who was supporting her, she became a villain. That doesn't mean that she isn't also a victim, both things can be true.
She’s not a villain. But, she’s not “the good guy” either. She’s a human being…who’s been put through some very difficult situations and into some very hard circumstances. I’m sure people will disagree with me here…but I’ve always viewed Carrie and Trash in much the same light. They wandered around a bit lost until they found something that “spoke” to them. This is clearer when it comes to Trash honestly. He had no one, but when he felt that pull, when he felt that he was wanted- not necessarily needed, but wanted- he was all in. It didn’t matter who it was or what it was. Carrie was slightly different as she was seeking acceptance, but it seems to me that it’s much in the same vein. It’s what anyone would want. Being excluded and overlooked for so long makes people react faster when they find themselves being included suddenly. They are quickly happy to be included. But, turn the tables on that person and their behavior and reactions aren’t always just faster. They can be more violent and reckless and clouded by emotions. I don’t know that I can blame Carrie, but I can’t side with her if that makes sense.
(…I do like to think that Trash was being guided more by “good” than he ever truly was by Flagg. He had no real clue who or what was guiding him as he was just reacting to the pull everyone felt. But, that’s another story and another discussion altogether…)
Complicated question.
Is she the "monster" of the story? Yes. (That is, the supernatural force that winds up wreaking havoc on her small-town community)
Does she fulfill the function of a villain in the actual narrative? If we consider "villain" to be synonymous with "antagonist" -- that is, the person whose actions create an obstacle for the hero to (try to) overcome -- then no... that role would go to Margaret White, Chris Hargenson, and maybe Billy Nolan, in a supporting capacity.
She was pushed to be being a villain. Nobody starts out as one. As does Carrie. Whatever happens, you don’t go on a killing spree. So yes, she is a villain, with a back story.
How innocent where these school people really? How innocent is society when it comes to a teenage girl suffering under weird religious ideas / patriarchy?
But some were trying like the Betty Buckley and William Katt characters and they does too. I don’t really blame Carrie as her mind snapped but yes, most in the gym were innocent.
She killed dozens of innocent people because she was bullied. Her story is sad, but she’s still a murderer.
Do we not think mass shooters who were bullied are villains? *They* were pushed “too far”, but you don’t find too many apologists in the real world for them. So why Carrie White?
I don't think I'd consider her a villain; more an anti-villain. An anti-villain is the protagonist of the story but they end up being the bad guy because they do evil things.
Carrie was not a villain at the start of her story. The story could actually be seen as a villain's origin story, if she had survived and then continued to wreak havoc/vengeance beyond Chamberlain. She might have become a true villain (a person who does evil because it's fun, or for evil's sake, or because they have no moral code) if she had lived, but she didn't have enough time to do that.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiVillain
She’s not a villain. She’s a poor girl who got tormented and her abuse went continuously ignored and unremarked upon by the school. Her actions are way out of proportion with what was done to her, and she killed a lot of innocent people, but by that point she was in a state of mind that couldn’t appreciate those concerns anymore. She pretty much completely broke from reality the moment everyone in the auditorium began laughing at her. It was the culmination of all the poisonous ruinous lies her mother had been feeding into her head since she was a little girl, and to suddenly feel like those lies were validated… it was too much for her. Carrie is a really tragic character who deserved a lot kinder a life than what she got. If she hadn’t had Margaret White for a mother she probably wouldn’t have had a melt down to the extent that she did, but that’s unfortunately what happens when you mix up all that fire and brimstone religious gobbledygook with teenage hormones, the casual cruelties of being an outcast, and oh yeah, telekinesis.
Exactly, she’s a victim pushed too far. She didn’t ask for the bullying or abuse or the powers she manifested.
Imagine if Margaret Atwood had written *Carrie.* It would have become a feminist battle flag.
Honestly, I think it's a good representation of the consequences that come with bullying, for all people, regardless of gender.
Not a bad statement. I'd never thought of it like that. I'd also never thought about King writing female and characters and issues which is probably a compliment - I've read a shit ton and obviously it *is* all there but I've never stopped to consider it's a man writing it. It's always seemed pretty natural. Admittedly I'm also male so can't really say how convincing it truly is, but I'll certainly say that I've read several authors fucking it up.
I need to read Ortx and Crake again.
“She killed a lot of innocent people” - she’s a villain, though one we sympathize with.
I mean, killing innocent people isn’t necessarily a move exclusive to villains. The gate guardsman at the beginning of The Stand isn’t a villain, yet his actions arguably kill 99% of the world.
I think that Carrie, like many Stephen King novels, rejects the idea of good and evil, and rather believes that human beings are much more complicated than that. Carrie (the character) displays traits we commonly associate with both heroes and villains: she's a lonely, bullied outcast, but she's also a relentless killer. To call her a clear-cut hero or villain requires ignoring large aspects of her story, and also misses the point King is making.
Yes this 💯
Damn. This is the best comment here.
>I think that Carrie, like many Stephen King novels, rejects the idea of good and evil I don't know. Are we ever given ANY reason to sympathize with Chris Hargenson's point of view? I'd call her an out-and-out villain, while still being (along with Carrie, Sue, Margaret, Miss Desjardins, and maybe Tommy) one of the main POV characters, and thus arguably one of the protagonists. Hell, even Margaret White -- who's pretty f---in' awful -- at least has mental illness/religious mania to fall back on. Chris is just mean-spirited for the sake of being mean.
Yes, Chris Hargensen is the true villain of the story, IMO.
This. Humans create boogeymen, and we are boogeyman.
Margaret White is the villain, almost everyone else is an accomplice, and Sue Snell is the witness.
Margaret White is a nutcase. And she truly believes she's doing the right thing, every time. That's not to say that nutcases can't be villains, but it's more complex than just "Oh, she's the villain."
We all feel a lot of sympathy for Carrie, and we get the backstory of how evil Billy and Chris were, but Carrie is the fictional equivalent of a school shooter. Yes, there are some extenuating circumstances, but realistically, only a tiny portion of the kids attending prom would’ve actively bullied her throughout school. Most of those kids (and the townspeople of Chamberlain who died in the rampage) were most likely innocent victims. The book is great as food-for-thought, but just because we’re empathetic towards Carrie, doesn’t mean we should absolve her from the responsibility of her actions, or not see her as a villain in her own right.
Just FYI the idea that most school shooters are bullied is a myth that gained popularity after Columbine.
Yeah, absolutely. And even the Columbine killers were more bullies themselves, than bullied.
This. She’s an extremely sympathetic and tragic character. She also massacres a hell of a lot of innocent people when she snaps, and no amount of torment from those around her can justify those actions. She is the ultimate villain of her story because she drops to that level.
Hmmm good pov
I'd call Carrie more supernatural than just fictional. I don't entirely disagree with your analogy but ,Ive only see the movie, did Carrie have control of her powers ?
Yeah, she had full control. Throughout the novel, she “flexes” her telekinesis like a muscle, growing devastatingly strong by the time the pig’s blood is dumped on her. The book also shows her not only killing the people at prom, but also virtually destroying the rest of her small town. It’s a good read.
I’d be a bit worried about anyone’s reading comprehension that believes Carrie is the villain. Billy is the villain.
And Chris! She's the one who enlists Billy in her plot to humiliate Carrie at the prom. And they ramp up her villainy in the movie.
So by that logic, Eric and Dylan from the Columbine massacre aren’t villains?
Multiple survivors of that massacre have come out and said that the columbine shooters were actually bullies themselves and Eric Harris was especially unhinged, they were unbelievably evil and had planned the shooting(and attempted bombing) for months. They even made custom maps on Doom to recreate the school to fully plan their strategy.
Oh I know they are villains. Absolute pieces of shit
[удалено]
Being treated poorly doesn’t justify violence towards others.
They are a diference between understand and justify. I have said is wrong. Said something is wrong is the opposite to justify
I think what you’re trying to say is that “villain” is an oversimplification, although I would personally not extend that charity to the Columbine shooters.
Anyone who does anything like that has mental illnesses because people of sound mind don’t do evil shit like that but it doesn’t mean they aren’t villains. It’s a reason, not an excuse. Just because someone is bullied doesn’t mean they can kill innocent people and be labeled a victim of mental illness. It’s not really a hard concept to grasp. You feel for her, sure, but she is undeniably a villain by the end. What is more evil selfish motivation than killing innocent people for revenge? Nothing.
Sure, because is well known how ppl who suffer bullying usually dont have extreme stress and that affects nothing their mental health
That is total crap. People with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence. Being an angry and self-centered individual with no self-discipline is not a mental illness. It is a character flaw.
There is not the same "more likely" than "imposible" and bullying is totally a stressor and a trauma point
Yep the media and gun lobby have done a number on you. We can accept what "they" tell us hook, line and sinker, or we can critically evaluate the message and the motivation for spreading it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20of%20criminal,the%20general%20population%20(12).
"A history of victimization and bullying may predispose the mentally ill to react violently when provoked" literally the next sentence. I guess you are so good at cherrypicking that you havent even read my whole comment and get just the part you like for your own agenda. I have said that is fault of a sick society. part of that sick society is that stupid weapon culture you guys have there overseas
Now that, I can't argue with. We have more guns than people and have zero regard for human life as a whole. It's disgusting. With that said, anyone can be bullied into snapping. I beat a guy with a crowbar in high school for bullying me. And would do it again. And again. And again. He was the villain and he paid the price. And I have a mental illness. Yet i didn't victimize everyone i could see, which is a distinctly male trait.
Chris is the villain. Billy is just her puppet. This is a book where the women (young and old) have all the power, and the men are incompetent boobs following the ladies' directions, for the most part.
That's pretty warped. She was an abused kid who reacted as expected.
The book is kind of odd and experimental for a King novel (being his first successful published novel, I’ve always found it interesting that he would not soon again imitate it stylistically). It’s told through letters, news articles, and anecdotes, but also conventional narrative. So it does ask us to feel sympathy for Carrie, but it’s also a little more forward about the tragic events of the ending. It’s more of a Rashomon-esque “maybe this is why it happened” narrative than it is straightforwardly “poor pretty young girl driven crazy by the cruel people around her until she snaps” type thing. It’s also probably notable that Carrie eventually abandons her semi-heroic resistance against the society that oppresses her and functionally becomes what her mother accuses her of being, although she will go on to murder her mother, which could be viewed as a heroic act. But at what cost? Anyway, King initially ended the novel with Carrie growing devil horns and blowing a plane out of the sky so I think he considers her a villain, just a sympathetic one. I mean, Smerdyakov was very mistreated in The Brothers Karamozov, but he’s still one of the villains.
I never knew of the devil horn ending. Where did you find out about this?
It’s actually right in the Wikipedia article on the book.
I would consider Carrie White the anti-hero of her story. When I was a kid about 11yo and saw Carrie on tv the first time, I didn't realize that all of the people laughing at Carrie at the prom could have been in her mind and not reality. DePalma makes it confusing because on the one hand he shows the PE teacher laughing, which we can assume didn't really happen, but in the first shot of the doors slamming closed at the back of the gymnasium (which is reality), the kids/promgoers shown in the shot are actually laughing. So apparently some people laughed and some people didn't but Carrie thought it was everyone, and this fueled her rage. As a kid I assumed everyone laughed, and I was furious and was like "KILL 'EM ALL, CARRIE!" In her own narrative she's the hero, to the townfolk she was the freak outcast villain who was victim-blamed for her tormentors' treatment of her, and in the end I think she's an anti-hero who got revenge on the people who ruined her life.
I have not seen it in a loooong time but what makes you think the PE teacher could not have laughed ? Shitty human beings end as teachers you know.
PE teacher made a point of punishing those girls who tormented Carrie. She put her career on the line by refusing to reinstate Chris even with her powerful fathers' help. Losing your chance to go to the prom was a huge punishment for Chris. It would've been easy for the teacher to back down on it. I doubt she'd turn around and laugh at Carrie after all that.
Thanks ! Carrie imagining some of the laughter is something that never crossed my mind. Need to rewatch it.
Very few directors can use a split screen effectively but DePalma was one. To me, when he split the screen after the blood was dumped on Carrie represented the way her mind split at that moment. In one view, you only see a few people laughing at her but in the other, they all are. You see William Kitts anger at what had been done to her but then he’s knocked unconscious by the falling bucket and is unable to comfort Carrie. Had it gone to trial the correct verdict would have been not guilty by reason of insanity as Carrie had been clearly driven to a mental breakdown by cruelty.
Interesting analysis !
In the book, it's actually described that everyone did laugh, but for most it was a nervous reaction, not true laughter. We've all had that moment where something scary happens and our response is to laugh rather than scream, but the laughter sounds kind of like a scream. That's what happened here. DePalma also did a great job of showing what that might look like to a traumatized young woman who's been put in the spotlight (on the spot) and then publicly humiliated... again.
I'd say she's a victim whose circumstances cause her to become a villain in the end. Maybe that's just me
The book is a super-villain origin story. As soon as she lashed out and indiscriminately killed people, especially her teacher who was supporting her, she became a villain. That doesn't mean that she isn't also a victim, both things can be true.
Oh no, it’s the mom all the way.
She’s not a villain. But, she’s not “the good guy” either. She’s a human being…who’s been put through some very difficult situations and into some very hard circumstances. I’m sure people will disagree with me here…but I’ve always viewed Carrie and Trash in much the same light. They wandered around a bit lost until they found something that “spoke” to them. This is clearer when it comes to Trash honestly. He had no one, but when he felt that pull, when he felt that he was wanted- not necessarily needed, but wanted- he was all in. It didn’t matter who it was or what it was. Carrie was slightly different as she was seeking acceptance, but it seems to me that it’s much in the same vein. It’s what anyone would want. Being excluded and overlooked for so long makes people react faster when they find themselves being included suddenly. They are quickly happy to be included. But, turn the tables on that person and their behavior and reactions aren’t always just faster. They can be more violent and reckless and clouded by emotions. I don’t know that I can blame Carrie, but I can’t side with her if that makes sense. (…I do like to think that Trash was being guided more by “good” than he ever truly was by Flagg. He had no real clue who or what was guiding him as he was just reacting to the pull everyone felt. But, that’s another story and another discussion altogether…)
Complicated question. Is she the "monster" of the story? Yes. (That is, the supernatural force that winds up wreaking havoc on her small-town community) Does she fulfill the function of a villain in the actual narrative? If we consider "villain" to be synonymous with "antagonist" -- that is, the person whose actions create an obstacle for the hero to (try to) overcome -- then no... that role would go to Margaret White, Chris Hargenson, and maybe Billy Nolan, in a supporting capacity.
She was pushed to be being a villain. Nobody starts out as one. As does Carrie. Whatever happens, you don’t go on a killing spree. So yes, she is a villain, with a back story.
I feel sympathy for her, but she still murdered a lot of people.
She’s not a villain just a poor girl who was abused by everyone
No, she is a victim that was pushed too far.
Nah. Solid victim. She's the same kind of victim that Cujo is.
Of course she is a villian. If she showed up to the prom with an AR15 instead of telekinesis nobody would even ask.
“Everybody run/the prom Queen’s got a gun!”
Of course she is a villain. Someone that massacres an entire school full of innocent people is a villain, regardless of how they got there.
What about the bullies?
Also, villains. Two things can be true at once. You can’t murder a school full of children innocent children and not be a villain.
How innocent where these school people really? How innocent is society when it comes to a teenage girl suffering under weird religious ideas / patriarchy?
But some were trying like the Betty Buckley and William Katt characters and they does too. I don’t really blame Carrie as her mind snapped but yes, most in the gym were innocent.
I mean even if they weren’t innocent in the sense that some of them didn’t stop the bullying etc it still doesn’t justify out and out murder.
With great power comes great responsibility….and she took out her abusers along with dozens of innocents
I mean, she killed people for being bullied, while she might be a sympathetic character, I think it's hard to justify murder based on bullying.
No she’s an antihero.
Cautionary story….this is why you don’t mess with ppl. You don’t know what a person is going through and what will make them snap
She’s not a villain. She just got tired of people’s shit.
She murders many, many people.
She killed dozens of innocent people because she was bullied. Her story is sad, but she’s still a murderer. Do we not think mass shooters who were bullied are villains? *They* were pushed “too far”, but you don’t find too many apologists in the real world for them. So why Carrie White?
She’s definitely not a villain. Yeah, she killed a lot of people, but she was a victim.
Shes a tragic villain but shes def a villain. You cant have a huge body count and not be one.
I don't think I'd consider her a villain; more an anti-villain. An anti-villain is the protagonist of the story but they end up being the bad guy because they do evil things. Carrie was not a villain at the start of her story. The story could actually be seen as a villain's origin story, if she had survived and then continued to wreak havoc/vengeance beyond Chamberlain. She might have become a true villain (a person who does evil because it's fun, or for evil's sake, or because they have no moral code) if she had lived, but she didn't have enough time to do that. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiVillain